Review verdict: As an immediate successor to the vivo Y31 (2021) that launched in the Philippines earlier this year, the Y33s offer incremental upgrades that improve camera performance and battery life, but not much else.

Pros

• Improved main camera performance
• Incredible battery endurance

Cons

• Expensive for its processor of choice
• Still no ultra-wide-angle camera

vivo Y33s Review Philippines Specs:

• Helio G80 processor
• 8GB RAM
• 128GB UFS 2.1 storage (expandable via MicroSD)
• 6.58-inch Full HD+ (1080×2408) IPS display
• 50-megapixel f/1.8 main camera with PDAF, 2-megapixel f/2.4 macro camera, 2-megapixel f/2.4 depth sensor
• 16-megapixel f/1.8 selfie camera
• LTE, 4G
• WiFi, Bluetooth 5.1, side-mounted fingerprint scanner
• 5000mAh battery
• 18w fast charging
• Android 11, FunTouch OS 11

The Y33s is here, eight months after vivo brought the Y31 (2021) to the Philippines. Despite sporting a different camera module design, the Y33s is more of an incremental upgrade to the Y31 (2021), with key upgrades in the main camera and processor. Are these upgrades worth its asking price?

Packaging and contents

vivo kept it simple with the Y33s’ packaging, where you get an all-white box with the Y33s branding in metallic blue and a bold vivo branding decked in silver. Like the Y31 (2021), the contents remain the same: the phone itself, jelly case, a pair of earphones, documentation, SIM ejector tool, USB-C cable, and an 18w charging brick.

Design

At a glance, the Y33s look more premium than the Y31 (2021), following the design language of the V20 down to the shape of the camera module. Our review unit is in the Midday Dream colorway, which has a blue and pink color tone, along with a matte finish that’s proven to be resilient against smudges and fingerprints.

Unlike the Y31 (2021), the Y33s has a flat frame, giving it a boxier look. Button and port layout remain the same: SIM card tray on the left side, power button and volume controls on the right side, and USB-C port, loudspeaker, and the headphone jack at the bottom. Like the Y31 (2021), you also get a side-mounted fingerprint scanner on the Y33s.

Display

Because of its similarities, the Y33s has the same 6.58-inch Full HD+ IPS display used on the Y31 (2021), down to the waterdrop notch for the 16-megapixel selfie snapper. While we think it’s absurd for a phone priced over Php 10k to have a dewdrop notch in 2021, the Y33s’ display boasts great colors and a good overall brightness range. Like the Y31 (2021), you can enjoy Netflix shows in HD quality as the Y33s has Widevine L1.

We have the same sentiments with the Y33s’ loudspeaker as well: don’t expect punchy bass or crystal-clear mids with the speaker, since the Y33s is more of a budget phone. Thankfully, the Y33s has a headphone jack for your wired cans.

Cameras

The Y33s gets an upgrade with the main camera, using a new 50-megapixel sensor that is physically larger than the 48-megapixel snapper used on the Y31 (2021). This explains the bigger space that the camera occupies, taking up most of the camera module’s upper portion.

With a bigger sensor, the Y33s captures details better than the Y31 (2021) and have better low-light capabilities. You also have EIS on the Y33s, which is evident with the relatively stable footage shot with it.

Like the Y31 (2021), we’re frustrated that you get a pair of 2-megapixel cameras that act more as filler units. We would have preferred vivo to ditch both cameras for something more useful like an ultra-wide-angle camera.

Selfies on the Y33s are also better than the Y31 (2021) thanks to a higher-resolution 16-megapixel sensor and better post-processing.

Performance and Battery Life

While it also has 8GB RAM and 128GB internal storage, the Y33s uses a Helio G80 processor instead of a Snapdragon 662 that’s present in the previous iteration. In synthetic benchmarks, the Helio G80 beats the Snapdragon 662 with single-core and GPU tests, which makes the Y33s’ processor of choice more powerful than the one used on the Y31 (2021).

With the Y33s offering better GPU performance, this makes it also better than the Y31 (2021) when it comes to gaming. The Helio G80 is a proven processor when it comes to this department, so titles like Asphalt 9 and Genshin Impact should run fine on the Y33s–as long as you keep the graphics settings for the latter at around Medium.

Like the Y31 (2021), the Y33s come with a 5000mAh battery that supports 18w wired charging. The Y33s lasted us at an incredible 20 hours in our video loop test, and topping up the battery takes around 2 hours from 19% to 100%.

Wrap up and Conclusions

Our review of the vivo Y33s shows that it does offer a fair share of upgrades to the Y31 (2021) that arrived in the Philippines earlier this year. While the main camera and Helio G80 processor are good upgrades, we find the Y33s’ official price as a bit expensive since the competition can offer a better set of features like an ultra-wide-angle camera and a high refresh rate display at roughly the same price.

vivo Y33s Review Philippines Price

The vivo Y33s has a price of Php 12,999 in the Philippines and is available at vivo’s official Lazada and Shopee stores, and at all authorized vivo resellers nationwide.